THE DIGITAL CLASSROOMS SERIES

DIGITAL TOOLS FOR

TEACHERS
BY NIK PEACHEY

© PEACHEYPUBLICATIONS.COM
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INTRODUCTION
This book has been written and designed primarily with
English language teachers in mind though the majority of
the resources and tools contained in the book will have
much wider use than just language teaching.
The book contains more than 70 tools and resources and
these have been hand picked because they represent a
broad cross-section of what is at present available.

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INTRODUCTION
Whilst many teachers and educationalists continue to
argue about the distracting influence of digital devices in
the classroom and their impact on students’ attention
spans, there can be few who still argue that teachers
should not be using web based digital resources and tools
in education.

There has been a shift over the last two decades from
whether we should use them to how we should use them
and which tools and resources we should be using and
when. Most teachers have accepted and are willing to
engage with the process of sifting through the available
resources and looking for ways that these can support and
augment their students’ learning.

This task can at times seem daunting with a constant

plethora of new sites, apps and resources constantly
emerging whilst many of the trusted resources we have
used in the past can quickly seem outdated or disappear
altogether. It is for his reason that I have developed this
ebook. The book is designed to help teachers by providing
them with up-to-date information about new and existing
resources and by simply classifying them to make it easier
to find tools and resources that match their aims and
purpose.

The chapters of the book are divided into simple

pedagogical tasks that most teachers need to carry out or
help their students with and the descriptions of the
resources are suitably concise to make the book easy for a
stressed teacher to access and browse in a few spare
moments between classes.

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CONTENTS
The sites, apps and resources within the book have been
divided into the following chapters:
• Reading Tools
• Writing Tools
• Speaking Tools
• Listening Tools
• Grammar Tools
• Presentation Tools
• Poll & Survey Tools
• Infographic Tools
• Course Creation Tools
At present each chapter contains between 5 - 10 different
sites that have been selected to help you make a quick
choice of the tools you need.
All of the tools and resources selected for the book are
either free or have a useable permanent freemium offering,
so you will never be forced to pay for any of these
resources in order to sustain the work you are doing with
your students.
I do recommend though that when you do find any
resources particularly useful, and when you feel you would
like to continue using them on a longer term basis, that you
consider upgrading to a premium account and so give the
financial support that many of the companies need to
sustain their business and make improvements and
developments from which you and other teachers will
eventually benefit.

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KEEPING
UP-TO-DATE Over the coming years it is my intention to regularly review
and expand on the contents of this book. If you would like
to be involved and assist in this process you can do so by:
• Suggesting tools to be included in future editions
• Writing an entry about a tool you have used and
found useful
• Reporting a dead link or a tool or resource that has
become commercially unviable for teachers
• Reporting a typo or factual error.
Anyone who contributes in any of the ways above will get
a brief mention in the next edition of the book along with a
link to their own blog or website.
Send contributions to:
nik.peachey@peacheypublications.com

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FURTHER
READING Digital Video - A Manual for Language Teachers
• This is the first book in the Digital Classrooms series
and the winner of the 2016 British Council
Innovations award for Teacher Resources. The book
combines practical classroom activities with
resources reviews and 27 video tutorials to help
teachers develop the skills they need to effectively
exploit one of the most useful resources available
online.
Thinking Critically through Digital Media
• This book was designed to help teachers exploit a
wide range of digital tasks and resources to
encourage students to think more critically about web
based media. The book contains 12 lesson plans, the
whole of ‘Exploiting Infographics’ and more chapters
including how to exploit poll and survey resources as
well as tasks for exploiting presentations.
Exploiting Infographics
• This book was designed to help teachers understand
how to exploit Infographics both as resources for
prompting discussion and digital research but also
as motivating creative tasks for the development of
digital skills. The book contains a range of advice
and example tasks that can be used with a wide
range of classes. This book is also contained within
‘Thinking Critically through Digital Media’.
10 Lessons in Digital Literacy
• This book contains a collection of 10 lesson plans
that are designed to develop students’ digital literacy
and critical thinking skills. All ten lessons are also
included in ‘Thinking Critically through Digital Media’.

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Web 2.0 Tools for Teachers
• This is the oldest of the books and was first published
in 2009 on Scribd. It has since been downloaded
more than 250k times. It contains reviews of ten tools
along with a range of pedagogical activities that can
be used with each one.

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LESSON PLANS
Each of these lesson plans constitutes between 90 and 180
minutes of study and can be used in part as simple
conversation classes or in total for deeper research
projects. All lesson plans are included in ‘Thinking Critically
through Digital Media’ and a selection of 10 are included in
‘10 Lessons in Digital Literacy’.
• A World without Magnets
• Breakfast around the World
• Perceptions of Advertising
• Emotional Intelligence
• Careers for Introverts & Extroverts
• The Science of Happiness
• The History of Weddings
• Studying How to Study
• 50 Facts about Hair
• Body language
• Mind your Waste
• The Habits of the World’s Wealthiest People

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ABOUT THE
AUTHOR

Nik Peachey is a freelance teacher trainer, writer,

conference speaker and learning technology consultant.
He has been involved in education since 1990 and has
lived and worked all over the world.
He is a two time British Council Innovations Award Winner
and the Co - founder of PeacheyPublications.com.
He has worked with a wide range of educational
companies, publishers and institutions including Macmillan,
CUP, OUP, British Council, International House, Bell
Educational Services, University of Westminster, The Open
University, The BBC, Google Creative Labs and many more.
Nik is a keen blogger and content curator. You can find his
blogs at: https://nikpeachey.blogspot.co.uk/ and
https://nikpeachey.blogspot.co.uk/ and his curation sites at:
http://www.scoop.it/t/tools-for-learners and
http://www.scoop.it/t/learning-technology
He also publishes a twice monthly Learning Technology and
ELT newsletter at: https://tinyletter.com/technogogy/

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COPYRIGHT AND
PIRACY

© 2017 Nik Peachey

This book is an independent publication and has been
created in my own time and at my own expense.
I depend on the proceeds from the book so that I can
produce more work like this and so that I can feed my
family and send my daughters to college.
When you download or share this book illegally or without
my permission you are stealing from me and my family.
If you have downloaded this book without permission or
paying, please do the right thing and go buy a copy from:
http://www.peacheypublications.com/ or
https://payhip.com/peacheypublications
If you can’t afford or don’t have the means to buy it, then
read on in peace and I hope that it helps you and your
students.
Thanks
Nik Peachey

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2

READING TOOLS
This chapter contains a range of tools and resources to help
you develop your students’ reading skills. These range from
tools to assist with vocabulary whilst reading to resources
with a wide range of ready-made graded authentic and
semi authentic content to help engage and motivate your
students both at home and in the classroom.

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 READING
TOOLS
“This is a great study tool for
doing digital research and a
great way to build students’
digital literacy skills.”
Candy - https://www.candybank.com/
This is a really useful Google Chrome plugin that students
can use to save quotes or images from websites as they do
online research. They just highlight parts of the webpage
they want to save and click on the ‘Candy’ icon. The
information is saved into their ‘Bank’.
All information that is saved is linked back to the original
source and students can add notes about the information
and why they saved it. They can also organise and
rearranging the information they save to make it more
accessible. This is a great study tool for doing digital
research and a great way to build students’ digital literacy
skills.
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 READING
TOOLS
“This is a good sound way to
use translation to support
reading and vocabulary
building.”
ReadLang - http://readlang.com
This is a useful tool to assist students’ reading and to build
vocabulary. They just add the browser plugin and then click
on words to get translations of any words they highlight in
an online text. The words they translate are saved into their
profile and they can then use them to generate flashcard
revision activities.
Students can also edit the flashcards and add additional
information to them.
This is a good sound way to use translation to support
reading and vocabulary building. It is a freemium product
so students can use it to learn 10 new words each day. If
they want unlimited use then there is a charge of around $5
for a year.
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 READING News in Levels - http://www.newsinlevels.com/
TOOLS This is a useful site to find semi authentic content for lower
levels. The content is based around current news items and
each article is available at three different levels.
“This is a great way to get
students at lower levels
engaged with current
topics.”

The texts also have a recording of someone reading the

news. Level 1 is a very simplified version of the text with
quite a slow clear reading.

The top level texts can be as long as 3000 words. There is

also an app version for both iOS and Android. This is a
great way to get students at lower levels engaged with
current topics in English.

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 READING Newsela - https://newsela.com/
TOOLS This is another site that uses news stories as the basis for
language learning. Each story can be accessed at different
levels and if students register they can also access
interactive quizzes and open-text comprehension questions
that have been set by their teacher.

“This is a really marvellous

tool for structuring students’
reading development in an
engaging way.”

If you register as a teacher the site also offers you some

LMS type management tools that enable you to track
learners’ scores and set questions. This makes it ideal for
setting and checking reading homework. This is a really
marvellous tool for structuring students’ reading
development in an engaging way.

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 READING Rewordify - http://rewordify.com/index.php
TOOLS This is a useful tool for creating a reading activity based
around any text. Just copy and paste text into the yellow
field and click on ‘Rewordify text’ and the text will be
simplified to make it easier to read.

“This is a great tool for

helping students develop
reading skills and helping
teachers to produce
motivating reading activities
based around authentic
content.”

The site will also help you create vocabulary activities

based around synonyms and you can also print a number
of activity types based around the text including a cloze
test. There is also an interesting feature which analyses and
highlights all the parts of speech in different colours.

This is a great tool for helping students develop reading

skills and helping teachers to produce motivating reading
activities based around up to the moment content.

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 READING CommonLit - https://www.commonlit.org/themes.html
TOOLS This site was designed to help grade K5 - K12 native
speaker students develop their reading and comprehension
skills, but can also be really useful for second language
development.
“This is great for getting
students to work more
autonomously on their
reading skills.”

Students can choose from a range of graded texts and get

a wide range of interactive activities and reading support.
Teachers can also register on the site and assign specific
texts to their students.

The reading support tools combine text-dependent

comprehension questions and discussion type questions to
focus students’ attention as well as text-to-speech and
dictionary / glossary type vocabulary support. Students and
teachers can also download the text as a pdf file.

This is great for getting students to work more autonomously

on their reading skills.

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 READING ReadWorks Digital - http://digital.readworks.org/
TOOLS Like many of the other tools this site helps teachers find
ready made reading activities that they can assign to
students. The site has ready prepared questions for the
texts as well as vocabulary support.

“The site looks like it will be

better for higher level
readers rather than
beginners as many of the
articles are quite complex.”

ReadWorks also makes it very easy to print the articles for

use in classrooms where there is limited internet
connectivity.

The site looks like it will be better for higher level readers
rather than beginners as many of the articles are quite
complex.

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 READING DreamReader - http://dreamreader.net/
TOOLS This site was designed specifically for English language
learners and has a range of reading texts at different levels.
Each text also has an interactive online quiz and an audio
recording of the text.

“This is a really useful free

resource which is constantly
growing.”

The materials can also be downloaded as pdf and printed

for use in the classroom. Each one also has a
downloadable version of the audio file.

These materials are great for homework reading

assignments or for use in the classroom. This is a really
useful free resource which is constantly being up-dated.

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 READING Lingro - http://lingro.com/
TOOLS This is a tool that can be used to assist students with the
reading of more challenging web based texts.

“Used over time this can be

a really powerful tool to
help students develop their
reading skills and
vocabulary.”

They simply add the URL of the text to Lingro and it

overlays an interactive dictionary on the text. Students can
then click on any word to get a dictionary definition or
translation. The words they click on are collected in the
Lingro ‘history’ and students can then add them to wordlists
in the ‘Learn’ section of the site. The wordlists they create
can then be converted into interactive flashcards for
vocabulary revision.

The ‘Sentence History’ part of the site also stores a link to

the original text where the student found the word and the
sentence that it appeared in, so students also have an
example sentence and information about context.

Used over time this can be a really powerful tool to help

students develop their reading skills and vocabulary.

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 READING Scrible - https://www.scrible.com/
TOOLS To use Scrible you need to instal a browser plugin. Scrible
can be installed on most browsers including mobile
versions.
“This is a powerful tool for
developing students
collaborative digital study
and research skills.”

Once installed it can be used while students read online.

The toolbar enables student to annotate web based texts
with sticky notes, highlighting, underlining and a range of
other features. All of the annotated texts are stored in the
student’s library so they can them come back to the text
and find and review their annotations. The texts can also be
shared privately or through social media with a tutor or peer.

This is a powerful tool for developing students’ collaborative

digital study and research skills.

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The other 8 chapters of this book are available from:
http://peacheypublications.com/

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